Likewise it had to be marked out.
It was tough.
I come by recycling pretty honestly.
My father was a new and used car dealer and he liked to use car business better because
you could take a car someone traded in and fix it up and sell it to somebody who couldn't
afford a new car.
Then all of a sudden here I am recycling also, so it's kind of like the second generation
of recycling.
I started tearing apart these wrecked cars and making sculptures out of them.
I looked forward to it for so long and I had collected all this metal that was just waiting
to be transposed.
My name is Rachelle Ford and I'm 81 years old almost and I'm a metal sculptor.
We live in the historical part of Palo Alto, which where all the Stanford professors lived
originally.
And it's pretty conservative in terms of the old houses and how they're colored.
When I became an artist I thought, oh I don't have much time to be discovered here.
How's they making it?
I know I changed careers.
Some girlfriends and I painted the outside of the house these pretty wild colors.
So I thought, oh everybody's going to stop and know something happened here, it's different.
I'm a homebody, I love being home.
And that's why I decided I was going to turn the house and yard really into my own gallery.
When I first became an artist I had never taken an art lesson in my entire life, not
even in grade school, high school, college, nothing.
And like I said at age 58 I taught myself to be a welder and I started out with little
tin cans burning holes in them to see how the equipment worked.
And then I thought, you know if you want to make a living as an artist and not be a starving
artist you've got to do more than burn holes in tin cans.
I did some sculptures for Congresswoman Barbara Lee.
She happened to wear a piece of jewelry I made and Barack Obama said, oh I love that,
where did you get that?
I want to buy a piece for my wife and Barack Obama bought it for his wife Michelle.
So I've been very, very what I consider successful.
I do make a living as an artist so that makes me happy.
I've been very successful the first two years I was an artist.
I had chosen New York.
I have things all over the world so it's very validating.
I think because I was older when I started people were intrigued with the idea that I
had taught myself to use 6300 degrees of heat which is twice the heat of the sun to draw.
I really love it that much.
I just get wiser and more creative as the time goes on.
And I always said, oh I don't have time to take a course, I have to teach myself.
And then I remembered something my old boss used to say.
She said this just before she died, she said it's never too soon and it's never too late.
Whenever you decide to do something it's the perfect time.
So I thought she's right, this is the right time.
It's amazing how many people have given up.
You know they just said, oh I'm too old to do that.
So I'm invited in to lecture and talk to them.
All you have left in life is time and how you spend it really is important.
I think I have inspired people that they were really inspired to use their creativity.
That always makes me feel good that I've encouraged somebody not to give up, that life isn't over
till you take your last breath.
